RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. Combining more than one drug may kill more tumor cells.

PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of high-dose sequential chemotherapy as adjuvant therapy in treating patients with stage II or stage III breast cancer who have four or more positive axillary lymph nodes.

OBJECTIVES: I. Evaluate the efficacy of dose intensive, sequential adjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin, paclitaxel, and cyclophosphamide in patients with stage II/III resected breast cancer. II. Evaluate the toxicity of this regimen in these patients.

OUTLINE: All patients receive sequential chemotherapy regimens consisting of 3 courses each of doxorubicin, paclitaxel, and cyclophosphamide on a schedule of one course every 14 days. Following completion of chemotherapy, patients who underwent breast conservation surgery receive radiotherapy. Mastectomy patients with 10 or more positive nodes or with T3-4 tumors are also eligible for delayed radiotherapy. Patients who are hormone receptor positive (or whose receptor status is unknown) are treated with oral tamoxifen for 5 years, beginning after completion of all other therapy. Patients are followed every 3 months for 2 years, every 6 months for 3 years, then yearly.

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Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00002679